Of 400 marble quarries in the Alentejo region of Portugal only a handful are still in use. The majority have become flytipping sites and a locus of bad feeling. Our project sought to work with local perception and experiment with redefining these sites as remnants of an ancient civilisation. We spent a month recontextualising the quarries through the prism of a ficticious lost culture - the Marmaros.

To equip the Marmaros with a rich cultural past we crudely borrowed history from other rock cut heritage sites. With a few omissions, text written about Lalibela in Ethiopia provided the bones for our myth:

We excavated artefacts including the remains of a 2 octave marble marimba.

Our findings were presented at Pro Evora, the organisation responsible for the preservation of heritage in the local area, based in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Evora. "An evening with the Marmaros" (13 September 2008) included a programme of film, talks and performances.